Badgers

Certain species of wild mammals are protected under their own
legal provisions.

In Great Britain, legislation prohibits the taking, injuring,
selling, possessing or killing of badgers and it is an offence to
ill-treat any badger, damage, destroy, disturb or cause a dog to
enter a badger sett. A person shall not be guilty of an offence if
the badger is killed, taken or the badger sett interfered with, if
they have a licence authorised by the appropriate authority.
Licences can be granted for the purposes of education,
conservation, zoos, ringing, forestry, agriculture, land drainage,
archaeology, controlling foxes or preventing spread of disease and
serious damage to land, crops, poultry or property. There is no
individual legislation which protects badgers or their setts in
Northern Ireland.

Specific legislation for protecting badgers is provided by the
Badgers Act, 1992 (amended, for Scotland, by the Nature
Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004).